The Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, has marked his return to work after a two-week holiday with criticism of some senior government ministers.

Mr Yeltsin told the prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and his two deputies that they had failed to fulfil an obligation to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars in wage arrears.

At a separate meeting, Mr Yeltsin told the Russian Interior Minister, Anatoly Kulikov, that he should have consulted him before making a recent statement on Chechnya.

Earlier this month, Mr Kulikov said Moscow would be justified in carrying out preventive strikes against Chechen guerrilla bases.

The BBC Moscow correspondent says the president has wasted no time in showing he is fully back in charge.

President Yeltsin met Mr Chernomyrdin 20 minutes after his motorcade arrived at the Kremlin's Borovitskiye Gate.

The Itar-Tass news agency reported the meeting, which also included First Deputy Prime Ministers Anatoly Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, focused on the President's plans to make 1998 the first year of economic growth in Russia.

He returns to the Kremlin for the first time this year following weeks of absence initially brought about by a viral infection at the end of 1997.

Rumours of protracted and serious ill health resurfaced as he only held one meeting with advisers at his Valdai holiday home in north-west Russia.

Mr Yeltsin spent the final day of his holiday at his Gorki-9 residence outside Moscow where he worked on documents, Itar-Tass said.

His two weeks at Valdai mixed holiday and rest, it added.

Mr Yeltsin, who turns 67 on February 1, talked by telephone with the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, the British Prime Ministers, Tony Blair, and the Italian Premier, Romano Prodi.

In addition, he met the governors of the surrounding Tver and Novgorod regions.

"It is natural that the President meets with the leaders of a region where he is resting," a spokesman said.
 

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